


Stages

by Cosmic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-29
Updated: 2006-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic/pseuds/Cosmic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and the Kübler-Ross model.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stages

Dean keeps quiet. He's quiet and wound up so tight Sam can count the muscles on his arms from across the room. It's Dean's inaction that unnerves Sam the most, his muscles poised to act, but nothing happens, nothing follows.

Maybe Dean's depressed, the doctor tells him. He woke up from a coma and the next day his father died. There's a very good therapist he could recommend, for Dean or for both of them, really.

Sam sighs and shakes his head. Yeah, maybe later.

You need to allow yourselves time to heal, emotionally as well as physically, the doctor says, a tentative, kind smile on his face.

He doesn't reply, No offence, Dr. Kripke, but you let my dad die. I don't really feel like taking fatherly advice from you anytime soon. He doesn't reply anything of the sort, because his father brought him up better than that.

Instead, he forces a smile on his face in reply, excuses himself and sits in the cafeteria not drinking his coffee and tries not to think about anything.

*

Dad's death seems to have punched all the fun out of Dean. No quips, no lewd acts or remarks, no _Deanness_. Dean isn't hyper; he doesn't sing Metallica under his breath. He's just quiet and sometimes Sam catches Dean watching him, his eyes hollow.

Sam would give almost anything to just get a reaction out of Dean.

*

"Stage three," Dean says, "bargaining." And Sammy wants to punch him in the mouth. Dean doesn't know jack about the stages of grief. He hasn't so much as glanced at a psychology textbook or an episode of _Dr. Phil_ , so he's just pulling this stuff out of thin air or his own ass.

Finally, Sam asks, "What are the other four stages?"

"Huh?"

"Stage three is bargaining. Tell me the rest of them."

Dean looks utterly confused. "I don't know, Sam." His eyes rise to meet Sam's for a moment. "I think I learned it while I was sleeping."

*

Sam fluctuates between stages. He keeps coming back to anger and denial, in that order, and suddenly he can't stop thinking about Jess, about Jess's death. He's still stuck between anger and bargaining for that.

That's what revenge is, right? Even revenge like his, like theirs; just, noble and good, ridding the world of evil, hunting them.

*

It's not one, two, three, four, five, done. It's all the stages at once; a blur of emotions, or maybe it's stage two as the chorus line in a never-ending song.

Sam looks at Dean, still watching him, wary and cautious and guilty, but at least the body language has settled down a bit. He's not as overcome, not as rigid.

Grief doesn't let go easily, this much Sam has learned, but at least he can identify the word now. Next week, he might even be able to say it out loud.

It's not a never-ending song.

The song _has_ an ending, Sam's sure of it. Dean just hasn't told him the lyrics to the last verse yet.


End file.
